After
World War II, Germany was disconnected from the international scientific community due to the ramifications of the
Nazi regime. During this time, hardly any scientific conferences of high value took place in Germany.
Initial idea and establishment (1951) The two physicians
Franz Karl Hein and
Gustav Wilhelm Parade from Lindau, a small town located on the Bavarian shore of
Lake Constance, conceived the idea of organising a scientific meeting to bring together German researchers and physicians with Nobel laureates. They convinced
Count Lennart Bernadotte af Wisborg, a member of the
Swedish royal family and proprietor of nearby
Mainau Island, to call upon his good connections to Sweden's
Nobel Committee and Nobel institutions to support the undertaking. The first meeting, subsequently held in 1951, was dedicated to the fields of medicine and physiology and was attended by seven Nobel laureates, among them
Adolf Butenandt,
Henrik Dam and
Hans von Euler-Chelpin. After the success of the initial meeting, the scientific scope was broadened to include the other two natural science Nobel Prize disciplines chemistry and physics. Thus, a mode of annually alternating disciplines for the meetings was established. surrounded by students at the 5th Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting in 1955. Photo: Archive Spang/Lindau Nobel Laureate Meetings.
1954–2000 In 1954, the Council for the Lindau Nobel Laureate Meetings was founded and henceforth established as the organising committee of the meetings. Count Lennart was appointed as first president of the Council. Also in 1954, the concept of inviting students and young scientists to the meetings was introduced. This step was seen as a measure to add additional value for society to the meetings. Among the young scientists participating that year were also students from
Eastern Germany. While originally conceived by Hein and Parade as a European meeting of scientists, the Lindau Nobel Laureate Meetings slowly but steadily became more international. In the beginnings, only students from Lake Constance's bordering countries Germany, Switzerland, and Austria attended but year after year new nations began to send representatives. Since 2000, each Lindau Meeting is attended by young scientists from between 80 and 90 or even up 100 countries. In 1987, Count Bernadotte resigned from his position as president of the Council for reasons of age and his wife,
Countess Sonja Bernadotte af Wisborg, took over.
2000–2008 Shortly before the turn of the millennium, the future of the Lindau Nobel Laureate Meetings was again endangered due to financial uncertainties. In order to counter this negative development, Countess Sonja Bernadotte expanded the Council and added experts from charitable foundations and public affairs as well as representatives of Stockholm's
Nobel Foundation to the committee. Two main goals of Countess Sonja Bernadotte's aegis were the further internationalisation of the meetings and to improve its public images, both domestically and internationally. On the occasion of the 50th Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting in the year 2000, the establishment of the
Foundation Lindau Nobel Laureate Meetings was officially announced. Its main goal since then has been to secure the funding of the Lindau Nobel Laureate Meetings. Upon its creation, 50 Nobel Laureates joined the Founders Assembly of the foundation and support the continuance of the conference both ideationally and financially. The 50th Lindau Meeting in 2000 was also the first interdisciplinary meeting that united Nobel laureates and students from all three natural science disciplines (physics, chemistry, or physiology and medicine) of the Nobel Prize.
2008–2019 When Countess Sonja Bernadotte died in October 2008, her daughter, Countess Bettina Bernadotte, was elected President of the Council. She continued her mother's course and worked steadily to expand the international network of scientific partner institutions, complementing this with a strong commitment to education and an increase in the social value of the conferences.
Since 2020 For the first time in its nearly 75-year history, the conference planned for 2020 had to be postponed to the following year due to the worldwide Corona pandemic. Instead, Nobel laureates, Lindau alumni, and young scientists came together online and exchanged ideas virtually at the Online Science Days 2020 and the Lindau Online Scienceathon 2020. In the summer of 2022, the conferences on chemistry and economics were held in a hybrid format, with appropriate measures in place for on-site participants in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. The Lindau Alumni network has been systematically expanded over the past years through numerous offerings, which were primarily conducted online. ==Meetings==